The Seagull School of Publishing

During my time at The Seagull School of Publishing, where I had the chance to study book design, I worked on various covers to implement what we were taught. From fictional titles to revisiting real ones, the assignments were varied. Select designs from those assignments are displayed here.

The Urdu List: The Quilt

The brief was to design a series look. I chose to compile 'The Urdu List' comprising of women writers whose work was considered obscene at the time of publication and faced a lot of backlash as they challenged the impositions on women by society.

The Urdu List: Aangan

The idea was to create something visually striking. I decided to work with watercolour splashes to create abstract imagery. What dictated each of the watercolour splashes and their direction was the feeling or emotion brought about by the title.

The Urdu List: Angaaray

The books chosen for a demo of the series look were The Quilt by Ismat Chugtai, Aangan by Khadija Mastoor and Angaaray by Rashid Jahan.

The Book of Birds

We were told the book falls under the 'Fiction' genre and asked to interpret the covers after being given the title. Since the brief was pretty open ended, I decided to challenge myself and the work I had done so far as part of the class and work on a darker theme. I quickly came up with a premise and based this cover on the same using a few elements from the story that I'd created.